Again slowly the time rolled around for us to go to the court. I was so nervous I could hardly even walk. My heart felt like a drum beating against my chest. I was sure everyone could hear it. But once again as we waited for the Judge to arrive and I wispered my prayer I felt that God was saying "Peace, be still." My heart beat slowly calmed and the nervous twitch in my hands was stilled.
The Judge entered, started with a small verbal review of our case and why we had returned. He ased if the Prosecuting attorney had any further questions. (Which he did not.) He asked if we had any further things which we wanted to say. Which I stood and made a statement. He than started reading through the 4 inch stack of our dossier (packets of documents required by the Russian authorities to support our petition to adopt and proving we have satisfied the requirements of the Russian adoption law) which now was much thicker due to the translation of each paper being placed with it. And for the next 45 min. He pretty much read through every paper.
Again he asked the 3 officials who needed to testify, to do so.
And than he had us again state our petition. He walked out and 5 minuets later returned and had us stand as he declared we were now the legal parents of Zarina.
Relief flooded our hearts as we eagerly looked forward with telling Z the good news! She did belong to somebody! She would get to escape the outcome of the children who are not adopted into families. Opportunities abound for her to excell and overcome her status as "orphan." She would no longer have to present (as an adult) her national ID that would always identify her as from an orphanage. She would not have to become a statistic of prosititution, drugs, theivery, instabilty, homelessness, joblessness or suicide.
She belonged!
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